If you are passionate about healthy eating, cooking, and eliminating hunger through hands-on education, then you may be interested in volunteering with our program.

Cooking Matters is a 6 week cooking and nutrition education course that empowers low income families to prepare healthy and affordable meals. Our volunteer commitment is 3 hours per week for 6 consecutive weeks. The volunteer team for each course consists of a culinary instructor, nutrition instructor, classroom manager, and a coordinator (a Second Harvest Food Bank employee). All volunteers go through a 2 hour nationally developed online training and a 1 hour in person training. Volunteers work out of a nationally developed curriculum. The curriculum includes goals, objectives, talking points, and recipes for each week. The curriculum is user friendly and practical for our volunteer base consisting of busy students and professionals, as well as retirees that are looking for a less demanding volunteer opportunity.

Our curriculum is implemented with a facilitated dialogue style of teaching. This means we ask that you do not lecture but rather have participant led conversations around the weekly topics. All supplies including food, equipment, paper goods, cleaning supplies, and handouts are brought to the site by the coordinator. We ask volunteers to show up to class with their instructor guide, and ready to have fun with the participants and volunteer team!

The class is 2 hours long and it takes 30 minutes to set up and break down. Each week the same 10-15 participants return to class. Class time is split into 3 main parts including cooking, nutrition, and meal time. We make 3-4 recipes during the cooking portion of class. We make enough for everyone to sample (not a full meal).

Feel free to ask any questions.

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